


A Slow Recollection

by tonystarkstolemyponcho



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Comfort, First Kiss, Fluff, Healing, Hurt, Identity Issues, M/M, Oneshot, Regaining Memories, Rekindling Relationship, Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes - Freeform, Stucky - Freeform, The Winter Soldier - Freeform, steve/bucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 21:50:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1485319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonystarkstolemyponcho/pseuds/tonystarkstolemyponcho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have a long way to go to diminish the ever-lingering presence of The Winter Soldier , but Bucky has a feeling that kissing Steve certainly might help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Slow Recollection

The Winter Soldier had been all too aware that the man with the strikingly blue eyes had been following him. But with years of experience in the area of avoidance and concealment, the man knew exactly what to do to avoid him. A masterful tactician, always two steps ahead. Whenever the others got a lead, he would be thousands of miles away by then. Although he could not deny the fact that he was following a trail that could possibly sort out the thoughts that were running through his mind. He couldn't remember anything before the killing, before the agony and the electrocution running through his body. All that blood in the snow, the cry of 'no' and an unknown name.

Until it was triggered by that blond man that had been the first familiar face that he had ever seen.

So, of course he sought to figure out the mystery that was his past. Travelling to where he derived from and to various other sources he went, picking up bits and pieces along the way. But it was not until he realised that the only way to unlocking it would be to question the man who was involved with it. Finding Steve again had not been too much of an issue, the man left a lot of tracks. While Steve was a man who, in the Soldier’s experience, always looked for a direct approach to the matter – that was always easy to avoid and anticipate. In comparison, he was someone that sought the back exits. The unforeseen ways were always the best for the strategist, and it was only due to that as to why he had survived this length on his own. He had no base to return to, no one to proclaim him as unstable, and certainly not a single soul who could contain him and send countless bolts of electricity through his head. The pain that he could still feel from time to time, the very one that made him awake at night with a loud scream in another language that felt just as natural to him as English did. Who was he, really? The files that he had found informed him of his name and date of birth, but nothing about the person that this useless and marred body used to belong to. It made him sick to think about, fury becoming too much sometimes so that he drove his fist into the nearest hard surface and watched as the metallic surface of his prosthetic arm contract to absorb the shock of the hit. It never made him feel any better, nothing truly did. It felt as though he was suffocating, lost in a life that was never truly his own.

None the less, Steve (as he had been informed by the blue-eyed man when he had shown up at his residence under the cover of darkness) had been all too eager to offer a helping hand. That just made him far more befuddled than before, seeing as there was someone who was willing to help him. From all that the Soldier could remember through the haze that was his life, it was that he had been used for the benefits of others. He had had no voice in regards to that, stuck back under a diabolical machine if he had ever spoken out about the harsh treatment that he had received. Then there was this man with the stupidly big grin and oddly clumsy nature (despite the sheer power that his body possessed) that offered a helping hand to a man that needed it the most.

It had taken a lot of time and patience to get to where he was now. And Bucky even responded to that name now. He wasn't James Buchanan Barnes, nor was he The Winter Soldier. He was a mixture of the two, still as lost and as dangerous as before. The more human side of him just had control now. Not complete control, but more than he could recall having for quite some time now. It was enough to make anyone seem optimistic about the future, no matter how much he was invested with finding out about his clouded past. He had his drawbacks, of course. Some mornings he would wake up with no recollection as to how he had gotten there, all the progress that they had made through speech and pictures seemingly disregarded. Those days were always the most dangerous, for Bucky tended to attack anything that moved near him. A TV had been smashed, and a firm fist had connected with the strong line of Steve’s jaw more than once. It took those devastatingly clear blue eyes to connect with his own for Bucky to feel like he had control over himself again. Those times were beginning to lessen, but the fundamental illusion that Steve was still his mission to extinguish still lay in the frightening presence of The Winter Soldier within him.

The memories were also something that were coming far more frequently now and on their own accord without any provoking or encouragement from Steve. Bucky could be sitting there and suddenly be bombarded with recollections of times that he had lived through. Almost each and every one of them contained the blue eyed man. A far scrawnier version, he would admit, but there was no denying those clear eyes. At three o’clock in the morning when Bucky returned with a busted up lip and a cocky grin as Steve coddled him and scolded him for not checking if the girl that he had been taking out that time had been going steady with a six-foot-four beef head before asking her out in the first place. Other times were when Steve was the one who was injured, or sick, or something along those lines. His earliest memory was when they had been children, watching this from the perspective of a little boy who had not yet found his place in the school yard. An individual by the name of Joel Burges pushed down a skinny little blond with a big mouth for scolding him upon telling a girl that she couldn’t play a game with them. Bucky had socked that guy right in the jaw and Steve and him had been friends ever since. Playing card games under the fall of night (way past their bedtimes Steve’s mother would note with a fond roll of her eyes), sticking up for each other, and being the support that the other really needed in life. It was something that Bucky was now coming to terms with. That and the guilt that was continuously twisting around in his gut at the fact that he had tried to kill this man on numerous occasions. The one that he had once, and hopefully would again, called friend.

Regardless, the one person that he still felt a deep connection to was Steve - no matter how the both of them had changed and obviously so. Which was precisely why he hadn't been shocked when he was bombarded with a memory of soft, and undeniably male, lips pressed against his as their limbs intertwined on a ridiculously uncomfortable bed. He recalled the details later. In the year 1939, there had been a heavy snowfall to coat the city in a thick blanket of frost and ice. For someone like Steve, with numerous health implications and a habit of picking up a fierce cold if the wind even blew in his direction, that was weather that never boded well. Which was the reason as to why Bucky had showed up with numerous blankets and a quirked grin with the suave question of, “hope you have room for another.” That was exactly how they found themselves to be pressed together on Steve’s bed, the smaller man’s knee pushing uncomfortably into Bucky’s stomach as the brunette draped his arms around that quivering form. Just to keep him warm, of course. Not because Bucky had ever caught himself thinking about how delicate Steve looked, or the graceful slope of his cheekbones and those damn eyes. They had kissed, and it had been ridiculously awkward. There had been far too much teeth, chattering from the cold, and shaking hands rutting against each other’s frigidly cold limbs. They had kissed for quite some time, only pulling away when Steve started to gain bated breath and Bucky was compelled to venture out into the cold for his friend’s inhaler. When he returned, they never said a word about it. Not that night, and not in the years that followed.

Which was a perfect reason for an already lost man like Bucky to feel even more misplaced in the world that he had found himself to be existing in. He didn’t go back to sleep after that memory had rocketed through his entire body, his heart beating rapidly as though it had just happened. As though kissing those soft lips had just happened and he had been ripped away from it prematurely. As though there was far more to offer. He felt… incomplete. While he was all too aware that neither of them slept at all, he felt frozen to the bed for the time being while he sorted out his thoughts. Bucky could hear Steve move around at night, even going to the fridge to feed that enhanced metabolism of his with whatever they had the most of. But it was Bucky who made the most noise, and he was sure that his companion had noticed. Regardless of what language it was, he would be doing one of two things. Whimpering for mercy, or snarling that he would never give it. Steve looked at him carefully the next morning, but he never questioned it. It wasn’t a topic to be spoken about, one that should be buried in the deep.

But this? That kiss? That was the last thing that Bucky had wanted to forget. There had been one continuous theme transpiring throughout those various memories that buzzed back to him. And that was the enthralling nature of Steve Rogers, his goofy manner, and his stupid one-liners that he had grown up with. Even now, he had found himself to be enamoured by him and how effortless it was for him to be good. Bucky still had to make a conscious decision about those kind of things, whereas Steve would not waste a second even thinking about doing something for another person. No matter how much it might have hindered him. It was as admirable as it was idiotic, and Bucky didn’t understand the self-sacrificing nature of the man. He didn’t understand a lot of things, but he understood that kiss as much as he wanted to understand his entire being.

Across the hall, Bucky made his way into Steve's room without a word. It took a lot of effort to physically move his body out of the soft confines of his bed, but he managed it with a tenacious thought in his mind. They didn’t have to talk about that, and the blond was a man who respected Bucky’s wishes in that regard. But he did want to understand more, he wanted to unlock another piece of the mystery that was his past with Steven Grant Rogers. He opened the door to Steve’s room, a shadow instantly being shed on the bump in the bed. He wasn’t asleep, that much was obvious by his irregular breathing and the slight twitch of his hand when a small slither of light snuck its way into the room. Much like Bucky, really.

Without another word, he slipped into the bed beside the hulking muscled figure of his closest friend, the one that he had tried to kill and the very one who hadn't given up on him. If Steve was surprised, he didn’t say anything. He just acted as though this was something that they did on a regular basis, sleep in the same bed. The blond turned around so that he was facing Bucky, metal arm draping over his trim side as their legs automatically became entangled. It was a lot less awkward now that Steve wasn’t someone that you could crush easily, and the heat that Bucky never felt anymore was radiating off of him. And in that moment he had to wonder why he hadn’t missed this earlier. How he had not craved physical touch from this one impossible man.

“Can’t sleep,” the brunette mumbled after a few moments, his face pressed into the crook of Steve’s neck as his warm breath danced across the fair skin there. It was minor, but Steve’s arm around him tightened marginally at that.

“Neither can I,” Steve admitted, taking a small breath as he felt that bit braver and rested his cheek on top of his friend’s head. “Always think I’m going to sink right through the mattress.”

Bucky smiled slightly at that, his lips pressed against his neck so closely that he was sure that Steve could feel the menial movement that meant so much to them both. Like before, as though they were lethargic children again who had run out of conversation, they grew quiet and simply indulged with the steady breathing of each other’s bodies until they eventually harmonized and they could hear nothing else. Steve’s heartbeat was strong, and Bucky felt a sense of relief for that. It was nothing like ragged and bated breathing of the little guy that Bucky would have followed into the mouth of hell for.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky asked after a while, his voice barely above a whisper as his human-fingers curled under Steve’s hip pressed to the bed. “About the winter in ‘thirty-nine.”

The silence that was evoked from Steve was answer enough. Fear of the unknown, confusion of his own emotions. Things that Bucky was sure that he had felt at the time.

“I didn’t know that you would have wanted me to,” Steve murmured quietly, moving his cheek from its position on Bucky’s head to allow the man to look at him. Hooded eyes meeting a brilliant blue.

“You brought all of your stupid to the future too.” It was a lame joke in regards to the last time that they had seen each other in utter normalcy. When they were on that double date that really just ended up with Bucky going dancing with two girls that he could remember nothing about. It was a profound memory of his, one of the first to come back.

“What--?” Rogers didn’t get any further than that before Bucky pressed his lips against the other man’s. They were rougher than the last time, chapped from a gnawing habit that Steve had gotten into. But the embrace was just as hesitant as last time, just as unsure and just as awkward. Until Steve managed to get the message that this was the one thing that Bucky wanted.

And who was a man like Steve to deny him of that?

For the first time in what felt like his entire life, Bucky felt at home. In the embrace of a man who had sacrificed his all for him, the very one that was kissing him back with a sheer need and want that had been there for who knew how long.

And he wasn’t going to let go of that again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if I'll write another chapter to this, but I think it suits fine as a stand alone thing. Hopefully it aids with whatever Bucky-involving agony that people are currently feeling.


End file.
